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Hilary and Bernie are NOT the Best Candidates Ever

Saw a meme recently saying how fortunate the democratic party was to have two such wonderful candidates running for president. Had to laugh at it. I know it wasn’t intended as a joke but neither was George W. Bush’s presidency. Let us be honest at least, Hilary and Bernie are not the best and brightest this nation has to offer. Hilary is, and has been for a very long time, a person focused on power. She likes control and she likes to be the one calling the shots wherever she is. While Bernie, wonderful old Bernie, is promising fiction. I am surprised he doesn’t actually speak elven as he espouses his desire for a world free of corruption and hate and greed. The unicorns don’t make it to the stage because there is a unicorn traffic jam somewhere trying to sort itself out to get to the stage. He has to many unicorns.

As it stands Bernie is the stuff of LOTR. He is Aragorn shuffled off to live in the obscurity of the forest for decades, suddenly to appear on the public stage in time for the final battle with the evil eye, restore good and proffer a light in the darkness to ease the minds and polish the souls of mankind. He brings us the age of humanity. He offers taxation of wealthy, and redistribution of wealth. He walks around the Colosseum with a cart loaded with free college and financial equality tossing them to the crowd as loaves of unleavened bread to feed the starving masses gathered. Bernie is what we want to hear. Bernie is the promise, the true faith based candidate. To believe Bernie is to believe in things invisible and unattainable. To believe Bernie is to forget that there is an entire government bent of stopping people like Bernie from achieving so much as taking office.

Having said that I still like Bernie. I would be insane not to as he promises the nirvana that Starfleet on Star Trek brings to this planet and their sector of the known universe. He offers a world where there is no need unfilled, no basic human condition ignored, no unicorns left unwanted or uncared for. I feel a little bad about myself that I cannot find it in me to believe he can come through on even one of those promises. I feel I have lost faith and I am worse as a person for not striving for the myth. I also recognize a bit of hypocrisy in my rhetoric when compared to my faith in Bernie’s ability to deliver upon us this golden age as often I am on the soapbox wondering why we lack Bernie’s type of faith.

Before this presidential cycle began though I had never heard of Bernie. This in no way invalidates him as a human or politician as I know of very few of them, and usually if I do know of one it is for a negative reason. What it does tell me is I know nothing of good or evil he may have perpetrated in his many years in office. This makes it a little difficult to see him, a career politician, as a savior for humanity in this nation. After all, in all these years in office he has never done anything, positive, or negative, to garner the attention of the media, and, by extension, we humans.

His opponent, Hilary Clinton, however has an extensive and varied track record. Her husband was once president. She has pursued politics and office for decades. She has supported various policies over time. She has sought the limelight and achieved it. She has waded through countless scandals and many successes. Her one overriding quality though, in my eyes, is a desire for power and control. She is the consummate politician. She knows the back doors and the back alley deals. These are both good and bad things.

Scandal after scandal have flowed off her like water off a ducks back. The republican machine has accused her of everything imaginable including, I think, placing those Asps in Cleopatra’s basket. It is hard to know for sure what is real and what is not when dealing with her. The e-mail scandal of having a server of her own, off government property and out of government control for instance. Legal, sure, technically, after all, others like Condaleeza Rice, and Colin Powell, had done it before. But was it greasy? I think so.

Why have a secret e-mail server under your personal control if not to send and receive back door information you do not want others aware of? Was the information classified? I don’t know. Even if it was not classified it was secret. It was Mrs Clinton secret. She had people she knew in places she was uncomfortable sharing with the general intelligence community would be a good guess. She used secretive methods with which to communicate with them away from prying eyes.

Is this bad by default? I would say no. It does speak to her being, not untrustworthy, but a career politician. She is a greasy, manipulative, politician that likes power. And this is where her and Bernie join up in my opinion. Both are career politicians. Both have been in office and held positions in government long enough to make their presence questionable. Neither of them are saints or neither of them would still be viable in Washington.

This means to laud them as saviors for humanity and democrats is laughable. It also means they are the only choice we currently have. While I do not think either of these humans will save humanity from the Borg or give us the Eden upon earth we so desire I do believe that they are both better choices than any one of the opposition.

Free college and income equality will not rain from the heavens. The police will not suddenly realize minorities are human also. The free market prison system will not shut its doors thus making the criminal justice system in America a profit free enterprise. Cellophane flowers of yellow and green, towering over your head, look for the candidates with the sun in their eyes, and their gone …. yes, elect them and the story will change. Hilary and Bernie in the sky with diamonds will turn into a politician behaving as politicians must and acting to the pressures put upon them in order to snuff out the unicorns.

They will however give us some hope of remaining war free for a time. Of keeping the EPA in place and marriage equality afloat. They may keep the ACA from being disbanded and repair it to make it more useful. They may offer us real things that the republicans refuse to. That is why I will be voting for whichever one of them is left standing. Not for the unicorns or secretive power hungry desires but for the fact that, as far away as they are from it they remain the closest thing we have to hope.